Timeless – Shaun Palmer 1985

I remember particularly well taking this photo because it was the first and only time I rode with Terry Kidwell, Tom Sims, and Shaun Palmer together. It was the Friday before the Sierra Snowboarding Championships in 1985. We were first in line for Chair Four-a double chair then-on a powder day, when road closures kept Donner Ski Ranch a pretty private club for most of the morning. Being new to the sport, I made top-to-bottom linked turns for the very first time on that day, and being with these pros made that especially important because I was able to keep up with them.

The exact location of the shot was the left face (if you could call it a face) of Donner at two prominent rocks overlooking a cat track that feeds you back to Chair Four (now a high-speed quad). Kidwell went off the jump to my right and Shaun, off the jump to my left, while Sims got face shots down through the middle. Tom Hsieh Jr. used the photo in a Sims ad on the back cover of his first and only issue of Absolutely Radical magazine (published March 1985), later renamed International Snowboard Magazine. Thrasher also published the photo in April 1985.